


Too Far Gone

by deathmallow



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: AU, F/M, Gen, Wicked Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-07
Updated: 2012-12-07
Packaged: 2017-11-20 12:42:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,290
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/585536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathmallow/pseuds/deathmallow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Safe</i>.  That was all he could think, watching another boy climb the steps of the stage towards Honoria Delight’s beckoning hand.  Jorey Appleton was screwed, so was the girl, Polly McComb, District Twelve hadn’t had a victor since Nualla Clearly in the 4th Games and that wasn’t going to change this year in the 52nd Games.  He’d be watching them die on television in little more than a week, though at the moment all he could hear was the pounding of his heart going <i>Not me, not her, not me, not her</i>, a rhythm of sheer relief. </p>
<p>For the Wicked Winter ficathon, <i>Haymitch/His Girl, AU, after her final reaping as an eighteen-year-old</i>.  Also AU for Haymitch never having been reaped.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Far Gone

_Safe_. That was all he could think, watching another boy climb the steps of the stage towards Honoria Delight’s beckoning hand. Jorey Appleton was screwed, so was the girl, Polly McComb, District Twelve hadn’t had a victor since Nualla Clearly in the 4th Games and that wasn’t going to change this year in the 52nd Games. He’d be watching them die on television in little more than a week, though at the moment all he could hear was the pounding of his heart going _Not me, not her, not me, not her_ , a rhythm of sheer relief. 

They were eighteen. This was their last reaping. Next year they’d both be nineteen, watching Reaping Day from the edges of the square rather than the kids’ pens. He looked over at Briar on the girls’ side and neither of them dared to smile because the terror of it was still so sharp, and he felt the tremor in his legs as he walked out of the square, wanting to run. Ash and Hazelle still had time left in the reaping pens but for today, he would be happy that the two of them would be OK.

Back home he changed out of his reaping clothes in a hurry and pulled on old comfortable jeans, his boots, a worn shirt—no need for his hunting jacket in this July weather. Clattering his way down the stairs, he yelled to his ma, “Going for a walk,” which they both knew meant he was going out beyond the fence.

He found Briar out in the woods, at the old gnarled oak where they usually met up, just where he knew she’d be. Both of them stared at each other for a moment as if they couldn’t quite believe it. Then she was in his arms and he was kissing her and her hands were clutching his back, rucking up his shirt and running over his skin. 

They’d been together three years and his hands probably hadn’t shaken this much since the first time he was fifteen and fumbling with her buttons. Three years of waiting, of doing everything but what they both wanted most, because like any smart kid would, they agreed they couldn’t risk a baby while they might get reaped yet. But today, it was all right. The risk was gone. _We made it, we survived._ This seemed like the only right way to celebrate that. 

He knew every inch of her so well but with the years of anticipation finally now done, it was somehow all mysterious and new, like it was the first time. Well, it was, really. Neither of them had much patience, and it seemed almost too soon that he was looking down at her, black hair against green summer grass, letting out a gasp that she echoed and thinking with amazement, _So that’s what she feels like. Now I know._ Being inside her felt nothing like his own hand, or hers, or even her mouth on him—Briar felt like nothing else on earth.

Then she moved, just the slightest shift of her hips, and that felt even better, but he saw her startled expression. “OK?” he asked, trembling with the effort to simply stay still, when all his instincts wanted to move, but if he did he was pretty sure he going to just go off in about four thrusts. 

“Yeah, just give me a minute,” she said, her hands stroking up and down his back as he shivered at the contact. “It felt like _too much_ for a second there…” 

“Thank you,” he said with a smirk.

She laughed, her body moving softly against his from the force of it, and he discovered how good _that_ felt. “Shut up. You feel good,” she said, and something about those words definitely got him, straight in the heart. All right, more than a little bit down south too. “It’s…we’ve been waiting for this so long, and…here we are.”

“Yeah.” _Finally._ He leaned down to kiss her, and when they did start to move they hadn’t figured out the rhythm of it yet before he came. At least having been together that long, it would be OK, she wouldn't be pissed off, though he did murmur a slightly embarrassed, “Sorry.”

“So I’m too much for you right now?” she teased him lightly, sun gleaming off her sweat-slick olive skin. “But,” her fingers played with his hair, “we’ve got a lifetime to work on it.” They did now, he realized with a sense of wonder. 

They didn’t have to wait too long to try again, and by the end of the afternoon, he’d also found out what it felt like to have her come while he was inside her. He was going to enjoy that one as often as possible, he decided. Getting dressed, and walking back towards the fence, she said almost shyly, “I’ll go visit the apothecary tomorrow. So we’re prepared next time.” 

Well, on the slight chance they’d made a kid today, it would still be all right. Plenty of babies were born nine months after an eighteen-year-old's Reaping Day. It was nothing unusual. “We should get married.”

“When?”

“Soon as possible.” He plucked a piece of grass from her hair and nuzzled her neck. “We’ve been waiting so long already. Don’t see a reason to wait longer for us to start having a life together now that the Games won’t fuck it up.”

“I’ll go see about a dress tomorrow. Maybe have time to make some curtains for the new house.” He looked at her and felt like he could barely breathe for the excitement. Finally, they could have a life together. Like the sex today, it wouldn’t all be perfect, but it was better for knowing that they wouldn’t be ended by something stupid and shallow like that. She loved him, through good and bad times.

It would mean the hardship of working the mines and never quite making do, and whatever kids they did have risking the reaping ball themselves, but that was the reality of life in Twelve. And oh, with her by his side, loving him as she did, he felt like it made that life still one well worth living.

~~~~~~~~~~

He’d rather the tracker jacker venom gave him more nightmares. Whatever had been in that batch, or whatever part of his brain it had fucked up, gave him a vision that was far more unbearable. It had been so vivid, like a fantasy of everything he could have ever wanted handed to him, everything the Games took away restored. It felt so damn _real_ while he was experiencing it. Being eighteen again, Briar alive and well and loving him, able to give his virginity to the woman he loved rather than to the Capitol bitch who had bought it when he was seventeen, able to believe in the notion of only having sex with one person his entire life. Making love in the forest, so insanely innocent for all he'd thought he knew so much, and talking about their future with the confidence of it coming true. Thinking about white dresses and curtains and having kids, and he wanted a drink so badly right now, wanted that vision gone.

Johanna was in the next cell and he knew the Peacekeepers were monitoring his cell too. It didn’t matter, there was nothing for them to hear this time. He felt a strange numbness where the tears probably should have been. Too far gone for that, apparently, though that was OK. He was forty-one which was too damn old to cry for some hallucination of a teenage fantasy he had lost a lifetime ago. This would all be over soon anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize for my evil muse.
> 
> This is technically "Long Road Home"verse compliant.


End file.
